I read about Anuta Chauhan's debut novel yesterday and I was kind of stunned. Apparently it's "the new blockbuster from HarperCollins India" and also "soon to be made into a major motion picture" but it sounds... rubbish. Doesn't it?
When the younger players in India's cricket team find out that advertising executive Zoya Singh Solanki was born at the very moment India won the World Cup back in 1983, they are intrigued. When having breakfast with her is followed by victories on the field, they are impressed. And when not eating with her results in defeat, they decide she's a lucky charm.
The nation goes a step further. Amazed at the ragtag team's sudden spurt of victories, it declares her a Goddess.
So
when the eccentric IBCC president and his mesmeric,
always-exquisitely-attired Swamiji invite Zoya to accompany the team to
the tenth ICC World Cup, she has no choice but to agree.
Pursued
by international cricket boards on the one hand, wooed by Cola majors
on the other, Zoya struggles to stay grounded in the thick of the world
cup action. And it doesn't help that she keeps clashing with the
erratically brilliant new skipper who tells her flatly that he doesn't
believe in luck…
I mean, seriously? Chick lit about cricket? What shall we call that - crick lit? Oh and something else bugged me about it. Timeout's review said, "A sophisticated first novel, The Zoya Factor brings the insouciance, humour and heart back into chick-lit". Um, when did it go away?
So what do you think? Is it just me and my own cricket prejudice? I guess it could be kind of Jilly Cooper-esque. I would never have
thought I'd me interested in a book set in the world of polo, but I was.
Will you be reading The Zoya Factor?
Related: Bollywood Nights by Shobhaa De